s guests to his own house in the vicinity of Boston.

The season was not the one for gaining a fair idea of the society of the
city and neighborhood; but if all the people who were away at the
sea-side and the mountains were half as charming as those left behind
and invited by Mr. Porter, to meet his friends, it is certain that Sir
Robert lost a great deal. On the other hand, it is equally certain that
if they had been at home Sir Robert would most likely be there now, and
this chronicle of his travels would end here. As it was, he found
something novel and agreeable at every step, a fresh interest every hour
of his stay. He began at the beginning, and promptly found out what kind
of soil the city was built on, went on to consider such questions as
drainage, elevation, water-supply, wharves, quays, bridges, and worked
up to libraries, museums, public and private collections of pictures,
and what not. He ordered three pictures of Boston artists,--two autumnal
scenes, and an interior, a negro cabin, with an hilarious sable group
variously employed, called "Christmas in the Quarters." Then the
questions of fisheries, maritime traffic, coast and harbor defences,
light-houses, the ship-building interests, life-saving associations, and
railway systems, pressed for investigation, to say nothing of the mills
and manufactories, wages of operatives, trades-unions, trade problems,
and all the pros and cons of free trade _versus_ protective tariff. Over
these he pondered and pored until all hours every night; and the diary
had now to be girt about with two stout rubber bands to keep it from
scattering instructive leaflets about promiscuously and prematurely. And
by day there were sites literary, historical, or generally interesting
to be visited, engagements with many friends to keep, endless
occupations apparently.

There was so much to see and do that the place was delightful to him,
and he certainly made himself vastly agreeable in return to such of its
inhabitants as came in his way.

"I have added to my circle some very valuable acquaintances, whom I
shall hope to retain as friends," he wrote to England, "notably a
medical man who confirms my germ-propagation theory of the 'vomito,'
which is now raging in the Southern part of the States (I had it, you
remember, on the west coast of Africa, and studied it in the
Barbadoes),--an exceptionally clever man, and, like all such men,
inclined to be eccentric. I think I was never mor